187. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FRIENDSHIP: Forming Connections in the Social Media Era feat. Jeffery Hall
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Today's guest is Jeffrey Hall— a Professor of Communication Studies and Director of the Relationships & Technology Lab at the University of Kansas and a visiting scholar at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. His research centers on building friendships, navigating digital media, and forming meaningful connections and he has written about these topics for the Wall Street Journal and in his award-winning book, Relating Through Technology.
In this episode, we discuss:
+ If social media is actually as harmful as we think it is
+ How friendships evolve as we get older
+ The effects of social media on friendships & relationships
+ Why young adults feel both connected & lonely
+ What you need to do to build close relationships
+ Generational differences in social media use & its effects
+ How to use social media without harming your mental health
+ The correlation between friendships and well-being
+ The two types of loneliness & why people feel lonely
+ Why people really spread hate online & how this impacts their health
+ Whether teen mental health & body image are affected by social media
+ Popular misconceptions about social media & why they're formed
+ What he wishes people were doing differently on social media
Mentioned In The Episode…
+ "How many hours does it take to make a friend?"
+ Relationships and Technology Lab
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About She Persisted (formerly Nevertheless, She Persisted)
After a year and a half of intensive treatment for severe depression and anxiety, 18-year-old Sadie recounts her journey by interviewing family members, professionals, and fellow teens to offer self-improvement tips, DBT education, and personal experiences. She Persisted is the reminder that someone else has been there too and your inspiration to live your life worth living.
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Sadie: Welcome to She Persisted. I'm your host, Sadie Sutton, a 19 year old from the Bay Area studying psychology at the University of Penn. She Persisted is the Teen Mental Health Podcast made for teenagers by a teen. In each episode, I'll bring you authentic, accessible, and relatable conversations about every aspect of mental wellness.
You can expect evidence-based, teen approved resources, coping skills, including lots of D B T insights and education in. Each piece of content you consume, she persisted, Offers you a safe space to feel validated and understood in your struggle, while encouraging you to take ownership of your journey and build your life worth living.
So let's dive in this week on She persisted.
Jeffrey: people don't think about how context creates opportunities for friendships
as a consequence, when we leave environments where it's easy to make friends people will go, Well, there must be something wrong with me now. Because friendship is hard now, but it wasn't hard then.
They tend to think that their deficiency in making friendship is because of something that they did. And I'm here to say, There's nothing wrong with you. It's absolutely sensical that you would be in an environment that makes it hard to make friends. And that's just kind of how it is. Part of the successes in young adulthood of getting jobs and moving on and going to graduate school and falling in love are also the very impediments to keeping friends.
Hello, hello, you guys. Welcome to She Pressed Us Dead. It is an exciting week. I just got back from the Anxiety and Depression Association of America conference, which sounds depressing, but it was my first psychology conference and I got to present a poster, which was so exciting. And I learned so much, met podcast, and I can't wait to share all the things that I learned.
So I do a little recap for you guys, either on social media or the podcast. So really on a psychology high. And we're just going to continue that with this incredible episode. We have Jeffrey Hall in the podcast today. I actually came across his research in one of my classes and I was reading about relationships and there was this specific, quote about friendships and how long it takes to build a friendship.
And I was like, that is so interesting. And I immediately was like, It's gotta come on the podcast, we gotta reach out and see if he has time, and he did. And so we have Jeffrey Hull on the podcast today. He is a professor of communication studies and the director of the Relationships and Technology Lab at the University of Kansas, and he's also a visiting scholar at Harvard right now.
So we talk about so many things in this episode. We touch on the whole social media and teen mental health question. We'll Everyone wants to know, are teens more depressed and anxious and lonely because of social media? Or is there not a relationship there? And so we definitely touch on that. We talk about how friendships change throughout our lifetime and what it takes to actually build healthy friendships and especially how social media impacts that.
We talk about using social media in a healthy way so that it isn't negatively impacting you. We talk about loneliness and how this ties into the whole equation. And then, of course, we debunk all the myths on social media and kind of what the research shows with regard to social media and mental health. So this was an incredible episode. Really so timely. Relationships, social media, all the things. I absolutely love this interview. I've been telling everyone in my life about it since we recorded and I hope you guys love it just as much. So we're going to dive in. A reminder if you want to enter the starbucks giveaway, I give away free coffee to one person each month All you have to do is leave a review for sheep resisted and send me a screenshot I really hope you guys are having a good month and i'll talk to you guys next week
Sadie: for listeners who are not familiar with your work or didn't stumble upon it in a psychology class like I did this semester, can you give us a little context and background about how you got into this field and kind of were intrigued by your research interests?
Jeffrey: Yeah. So I, probably the best way to describe it is.
Although I do a lot of work that could be psychology, I'm from communication. , so the discipline of communication really has these kind of origins in two things that I study quite a bit. One of those is interpersonal communication. So for a long time I've been studying things like friendship, , I've been studying things like dating and courtship and humor.
So all of these kind of positive aspects of people's relationship and relationship building. , but about 10, I guess now it's 15 years ago, I did some of my very first work on online dating and then on texting. And over the course of the last 15 years, I've done work on Facebook and Facebook, , basically detecting personality through Facebook and then later social media well being, , things around whether or not we can, , have a more positive relationship.
positive experience with social media and why and in what conditions we have that. So these things, two things really came together in my most recent work, which has been really about the online overlap of our online offline life, right? So our lives are conducted both online and offline, and there's a lot of overlap between our online and offline experiences.
Our relationships, who we keep in touch with and who we talk to. So my work is really focused on what can we do to have kind of a more positive digital thriving experience, , but also kind of thinking about why a lot of the sort of ways that people think about social media harms, , you know, may not apply to everyone equally and how we can understand those harms in context of relationships and context of use.
Sadie: I am so excited we're having this conversation because the number one question I get is, is social media the problem? And I'm like, I am not positioned to be able to answer this. I can tell you what's been helpful for me. But like, I'm just, a young adult who has gone through this experience, and especially adults and parents.
It's one of those things that they don't fully understand, and all this research that you've done isn't necessarily disseminated into public understanding yet. And so there is so much and misconceptions and just stress around this whole conversation.
Jeffrey: You're absolutely right. You're absolutely right.
I mean, I think that this is one of those topics where the public concern and interest in knowing the answers is enormous, right? People are very concerned with having good answers. The research on this, I think, is also being done and it's getting better and stronger as the years go on. But that information is not percolating back through kind of popular discourse.
, and I think what's really interesting is there's also a feedback loop here, wherein I think a lot of young people, young adults and adolescents, are told through their schools and through their parents and otherwise that social media is excruciatingly harmful to them. What we know now is your mindset about the value or the lack of value of any media actually affects whether or not you benefit from using it or not.
So people who think that they're actually being harmed by social media tend to also feel that social media is harmful. So what's strange here is that even our belief system about what social media is for or what it does to us affects whether or not we're hurt by it. , one example of this, I'll, you know, Kind of a, , a small one, but if you spend time mindlessly browsing or, you know, scrolling on social media, there's usually some sort of hedonic pleasure associated with that.
It's fun, it's engaging, it's interesting, it's funny sometimes. But what's weird is, is the degree to which that you are guilty for that actually ruins whether or not it's good for you. So what's strange is, is people after the fact go, Oh, I'm so bad, I should have used my time better, or that was just a waste of time.
It spoils the pleasure you get from it. So I'm not actually advocating that everyone should just be endlessly consuming social media, but I also think that our mindsets about what social media is for, what it does to us, affects whether or not we're even enjoying it for what it's worth.
Sadie: Yeah, 100%. It's so interesting.
And again, I, I love that you have the communication background because this is one of the biggest things I see is an undergrad who is chronically online, but also beginning to get into research is just this huge gap. And I think about the studies that I've seen on social media, and it's the current one trending on TikTok, which is that cats are Adopt humans personalities and then people like swipe and it's like a cat holding a Taylor Swift album And then the other one was dogs dreaming about owners And I was like if there was two studies that the general public knew about and remember it would not be these two
Jeffrey: No, not at all.
Not at all Yeah and I would say that that's one of the things that really to keep in mind here is that i'll say just very very briefly and very simply because I know you want to talk about friendship and other great things is First, the overwhelming majority of social media research has demonstrated that its effect on well being is minuscule, it's tiny.
So on average, for most people under most circumstances, social media has no real effect. It's not great, it's not bad, it's just basically time use that is neither good nor bad. Part of the reason that that etiquette is so small has to do with the fact that the variability of what you do with social media makes an enormous difference of whether you gain or you lose from it.
So people who tend to gain from it use it for things that are more directed in terms of group chats, group communication, being authentic and sharing themselves online and having a supportive community and responsive community, but also finding inspiration, education, information through social media, not dissimilar to the podcast that you're sharing right now.
And the people who tend to have experiences that are more negative tend to actually use social media in very different ways. And the last thing I'd say is that, And despite what the headlines say and otherwise, there really is not this clear line between the adoption of smartphones, the adoption of social media, and the current mental health crisis that we see a lot happening with teens.
These things are not related in the sort of causal direction that people infer them to be, but it seems to be that a lot of the rise in loneliness and mental health issues preceded social media, and a lot of people are turning to social media to try to make sense of their loneliness and make sense of those crises that they're facing.
Which makes sense, you know? It's a source of information, and that information is not equally all good or all equally bad. But it also is not the case that that information itself or that time spent on social media is going to make a vast difference in whether or not you're a happier, healthier person.
Sadie: Yeah. Okay, I love this. We're going to circle back because I have so many questions to build on this. Sure, sure. And I think the perfect place to like lay this foundation for talking about social media and relationships and all your work with texting and like you were talking about how online communities can be helpful is talking about friendships, which your research on is so interesting.
And I think as young adults, we have had our friendships tips. by like benefit of our environments. It's like, who were you in a class with? Who did you sit next to for a group project? Who was in the same school as you for the first eight years of your life? And then you get to college and you graduate and like you actually have to build the skill of making friends and getting to know people and you don't get those 40 hours by default.
It's like a whole different world to navigate. And I think also when we think about. Understanding friendships in our lives as we get to that point where we start to think, wait, is this a positive friendship? Is it a negative friendship? Understanding, how they affect our wellbeing is also beneficial information to have.
So if you could give some context for us on Friendships overall, like what it takes to build friendships, what make them beneficial, how it impacts our well being, all the things.
Jeffrey: You have like, like seven great questions there, so I'm trying to figure out which ones I want to answer. Wherever you want to
Sadie: start, and we'll do all the follow ups, I promise.
Jeffrey: , Yeah, I mean, I would start with kind of the idea that one of the, one of the ways of looking at friendship that I actually really tend to rely upon is this idea that it's also a process of maturation and adult development and young adult development specifically. So we know that for generations, 50 years of research has found that there is a period of life that's roughly happens between around, , 15 to 25, where people have the most friends they're going to ever have.
They spend the most time being social, they're ever going to be social. They spend the most time getting to know new people. And a lot of that has to do with, developmentally, what's going on. Not only is your brain and your sense of identity wrapped up and tied into your social life, but also what you're looking for in those experiences is to try to figure out how to develop intimacy away from your family of origin, how to test out new romantic relationships, learning what it's like to fall in love, but also what it's like to confide deeply in a friend and really fully, fundamentally feel understood in a way that friends can make us feel that way.
After about 25 years old, partly because of the reasons you said, people tend to leave college, they tend to , work or some sort of jobs. They may move around a lot, pursue graduate education. So, , they may change jobs a lot, they may move out of their family of origin, their home. All of these things precipitate the loss of friendships.
So people tend to actually go through a period after 25 where there's a steady decline of friends, the number of friends people have, and the time that people spend with friends that goes all the way until 40. Now, what often replaces that time are things that are very good. People often get married, people often have children, people often reconnect with their family of origin during that period between 25 and 40.
But you're absolutely right, there's this key time where you're experiencing this amazing spike of friendships and new people and social behaviors and parties and experiences of being in public with people and meeting people that just goes down and down and down over time. The one thing that I've been working very hard to de stigmatize, I guess two things.
One is, is this is not new, right? The social media era at the time that we're currently living in has certain characteristics that concerning, of course, around especially the time that people are spending in face to face communication. , I think perhaps an over reliance on social media as a tool for communication, but the broader trend of that developmental period has been going on for so long that it's really not the case that this is a brand new scary phenomenon that somehow works.
Things are so much different now than they once were. People care about relationships and friendships, and they have for a long time in this period of their lives. The other thing that I'm trying to de stigmatize a bit is yes, we have a higher incidence of loneliness amongst young folks, , defined typically as under 30, , that that increase of loneliness preceded the, , adoption of smartphones and social media, so it doesn't seem to be a causal link there.
But, and this is the key one, there's also an incredible high degree of connection, companionship, and friendship during that time of life. So young folks experience two things simultaneously which are actually really difficult to resolve. One is a sense of loneliness, and the reason that happens is, You leave school, you feel lonely, you break up with somebody, you feel devastated, you lose a friend because of conflict, and that's difficult and hard.
But on the other hand, this is a time of life where you have more companionship, you have a great sense of connection with people around you, young people experience higher number of friends than they will ever have again. So what's weird is, is that, Although, yes, it's the case that we should be concerned about young adult loneliness, we should also be quite aware that this is full of connection as well.
And I think that loneliness, in part, comes from a feeling of wanting to be known at a deep and intimate level. And that happens, I think, in the process of winnowing down all of that social world into specific, close, intimate relationships with one another. And that's a gradual process that we have collectively, , tended to put off farther and farther into the future as we delay marriage, delay having children, delay kind of making those big decisions in life.
Sadie: That is fascinating and it's interesting because it's something I've heard about a lot, like on the Penn campus. And I'm lucky that I like you're saying, a handful of friends that I feel I know very well. They know me well. I am talking into a microphone and sharing all the things all the time.
So there's this level of feeling known and understood, which I feel so lucky for. And I felt that with my parents, we've done lots of therapy, all the talking about our experiences. But I have heard that voiced where it's like, I have all these acquaintances, but I don't have close friends and people don't know me.
And we don't just have like, Real authentic conversations that go beyond the surface and tied with that is that like I feel lonely even though people are seemingly surrounded by others.
Jeffrey: Yeah, so it's very much a both and. One thing I'm a big proponent of is when we think about relationships, when we think about well being, when we think about loneliness, when we think about connection.
It is both and. It is both the case that we can be social and be, , you know, talking to a lot of different people and meeting new people and have a big social network. And by the way, all of those things predict being higher well being in almost all the measures of those things. And it's also the case that quality, close, connection leads to higher well being, less loneliness.
They're both. But the thing is, is that tension that you feel, right, I'm around a lot of people, but I don't really feel fully known, is actually part of the human experience. And it's the part of the human experience that I think is particularly developmentally salient and powerful at that period of life.
You're sorting out who you are and who you are to others. One of the benefits I like to, I've heard about middle age, which I think is very funny, is that although people experience the lowest level of their well being in their life at middle age, Once they sort of realize that, you know, , they know fully who they are, they have a lot more confidence in who I am and what I've accomplished in my life and what I'm all about, a lot of the concerns of young adulthood fall away and there tends to be an uptick in middle aged people's well being.
Because they go, well, you know what, my life, all those kind of crises about who I am and where I am and what's all happening have passed, and now I'm able to fully embrace myself as who I'm in. But that's a long period of time between 25 to 40 to get really comfortable with you where you're at. And during that decline comes with also a lot of very difficult questions.
What is your career going to be? What are you going to do about family? What are you going to do about relationships? So I think a both and perspective allows for us to understand that it doesn't make you weird or bad or somehow deficient because you feel lonely while you're being social. Feeling lonely is part of what it means to be a social person.
You would never feel lonely if you didn't care about other people. It's a good thing to care about people.
Sadie: Yeah. You mentioned that it's those deep, authentic relationships where you feel seen, you feel that correlate with that well being. How do we build those relationships? Because obviously, the skills that are required are very different than like, Having all the acquaintances or being able to small talk in a group of people.
And you have really interesting research on like, this is how many hours it takes to be together. And it's these interactions that form those long term relationships. And I think, especially in college, like you're saying, and even past that point, you're like, you've never done this process before of trying to build these meaningful relationships when they're not almost like built for you.
And so it's that, you know, experience like why don't I have these close friends? Like I want them. I feel like I'm trying but it's just not happening and so What is the research show on building those authentic close? Very strong friendships.
Jeffrey: Yeah, so the first thing is is that you mentioned the the hours paper You know the friendship hours paper has got me an opportunity to talk about one of my favorite subjects, which is friendship A lot of different venues, and I love talking about it because it's so important, , for us to value and honor the importance of friendship in our lives and our well being, so I'm always happy to talk about it.
The paper basically, , comes with three numbers. One is that it's between 40 and 60 hours it takes to build a casual relationship. Casual friendship between 80 and 100 hours to build a friend and then over 200 hours to have a close friend or a best friend. Now a couple caveats. These are not like numbers that are hard and fast.
Is it the case that some people move more quickly into these levels of friendship? Yes. Is it the case that you can spend 500 hours at a workplace with somebody and not call them friends? Yes. So it's not the case that hours are sufficient, which leads to the second thing, right? How you spend those hours matters.
So time spending, hanging out, playing games together, doing things that are just basically being in each other's company tends to promote a relationship development faster. And lots of research finds that developing closer relationships also comes with things like joking around and having meaningful conversations, but also self disclosure and affection.
So the idea is, is that the way you communicate. builds your relationship faster towards those levels of intimacy. So I love talking about friendship and the process that it takes. And the other thing you mentioned, which I think is really important here, is you are correct. During times of your life where you have lots of people who are all interested or available for friendship, who are around you for years at a time and have to kind of be around you because of school.
You have ready made access to people who are developmentally ready for friendship too, right? And romance and all the great things that come with, you know, that, that period of your life. So what's interesting here is that it's ready made in the sense that you're, you take it for granted. Most people, and this is true for adults too, But most people don't reflect the reason that I have these friends is because that a group of people at admissions Selected these people to come to my college.
You're at a highly exclusive University Most of those people went through a pretty rigorous process to get accepted from University of Pennsylvania, but you don't go Hmm, the admissions board is in charge of my friendship, but it's true that they are this
Sadie: SAT range is really going to be a great connection for these people.
Jeffrey: It's true. And if you had gone somewhere else, you would have a totally different set of people to meet and to fall in love with and to befriend. So it's interesting here is people don't think about how context creates opportunities for friendships or even very much dictate who it is that you're going to become friends or a romantic relationship with.
As a consequence, when we leave environments where it's easy to make friends because they're always around, we actually struggle with it because it was so easy before. So what will happen is people will go, Well, there must be something wrong with me now. Because friendship is hard now, but it wasn't hard then.
What people rarely do, comparatively, is go, It was easy then, because there were people everywhere, and they were always up for hanging out, and there were a lot of cool things to do. And now it's hard because people have jobs and are busy. I mean, people reflect on that, right? They'll say, We're very busy, I can't keep up.
But they tend to think that their deficiency in making friendship is because of something that they did. And I'm here to say, There's nothing wrong with you. It's absolutely sensical that you would be in an environment that makes it hard to make friends. And that's just kind of how it is. Part of the successes in young adulthood of getting jobs and moving on and going to graduate school and falling in love are also the very impediments to keeping friends.
Sadie: Yeah. A hundred percent. circling back to a bit of what we discussed initially, which is your research texting and social media apps and all of these other ways. I remember hearing, I forget where, that social media and being online can be a really great way to strengthen existing relationships, but it's not as effective with building new relationships.
And those new relationships really benefit from that face to face, tied together. How else does texting and social media and being online impact our friendships, whether it's quality or speed, all of those kinds of things?
Jeffrey: Yeah, that's a, that is a very good question. , and I would say there's a lot of ambiguity in the research, , about this.
The first thing that I'd start with is people disagree what social media are. So right now, particularly, things are getting really confusing because researchers like myself who watch the entirety of the social media's origins, right, we, I went to graduate school when Facebook was launched. And so I've seen it and studied it from its very nascent beginnings.
And there was a certain set of assumptions about what media are that we all kind of agreed on. What's happened now, particularly with the rise of TikTok, which has also led to people turning to more online videos on YouTube, which has also meant that Instagram and Facebook are copying it through reels, means that social media, as they once were, are no longer the social media that young folks particularly are using.
And there are huge generational divides. What that means is, is using social media for the sake of relationships really depends on what you think of what social media is. I am personally, very doubtful that any broadcast based social media experience is relationship building. , it can be pleasurable. It can be fun.
It may not be a bad use of your time, or it could be a good use of your time. It really depends on what you're watching and you know, what you, whether you're getting anything out of that experience. And when I mean broadcast based, I mean TikTok short videos. I mean, YouTube videos. I mean, anytime you're watching influencers, content creators or otherwise can share things with you.
Could be good. It could be okay, it could be bad, it really doesn't make much difference in the bigger scheme of your relationships, right? When we think of relationship based social media, which I tend to do in my book, Relating Through Technology, is about, I tend to think of it as the overlap between technologies that are really corally around text exchange, right, that's the core of it, and then extend a little bit over to things like photos and and creation and curation for friends.
Definitely group chat or any group chats experiences definitely all qualify as social media and relationship relevant. And then the other piece which is relationship relevant is actually what I perceive to be a dying form of social media, which is very much based on a social network site model, which is what we counted on for 20 years of studying social media.
But it's dying. Facebook, as we once know, is not an experience you can have merely almost anywhere else. Facebook , and it's gone and it's disappearing because Facebook is trying to compete with tick tock and things that are potentially up and coming around online communities like read it or otherwise, I think, are going through a period of change which could allow for development of an online community.
But I think there's a question mark as to whether or not that's relationship building or online community building, which to me are both good things but are different things.
Sadie: 100%. So maybe this is subjectively what you do in your own life or like do as I say not as I do. What would like the best case scenario be for how we use social media?
Again, there are positive benefits, especially if you think things are funny, you're enjoying the experience, but also this relationship piece as well, where you can try and boost those feelings of connection.
Jeffrey: It's a great question. You know, I've thought a lot about how to how to get this answer to be the most, , , true to the research, but also not too long winded and I'll, I'll, I'll try to break it down to this.
I think if we think of what we're really doing with social media is leisure, right? If we go, okay, social media is a form of how we spend our leisure. And some of that leisure can be through communication with others. And some of that leisure is to be passively entertained. So this has been true, by the way, leisure has always had two parts, entertainment, passivity, And I, and passivity is a strong word.
I mean even reading is passive in the sense that I'm not talking to another person but I'm receiving. But even if you pick your favorite film or your favorite TV show, it's passive in some sense but you're also excited and engaged to see the content. So one part of our leisure is that. The other part of our leisure is hanging out, spending time with friends, spending time with family, spending time with the people that you love, talking to them, being with them.
And that overlaps with social media in the sense in which that texting, group chat, all those things bring those two worlds together. So there's a little bit of the idea that I can have entertainment media sent through, you know, interpersonal channels. , like you can send people memes, you can suggest TikToks to them or reels to them, right?
You can, but when we think of it broadly as leisure, the question that I think young people should be asking themselves is, what is the best use of my leisure time for me? What is the best way that I can spend my leisure? And you're going to have a lot of it, , throughout your whole life, but you're going to have a little, , particularly a lot of it.
If you were a college student, you have a lot of control of how you spend your time to me. The way to answer the question of what's the best use of your time has to come from you being reflective about what are your needs, right? If you need to have downtime, if you need to chill out, if you need to have some time playing games or, you know, watching reels or whatever to decompress and to de stress, sure, absolutely.
But without question, everyone needs time to spend being social. Everyone seems to have a fundamental need to belong. You need to be satisfied. And if you have. Some part of your body or your brain that's saying, I want to be around people more taking action to make sure you're nourishing your need to belong through spending more time in meaningful conversation.
Some of that should be face to face, but there's a really valuable role to having like video chat catch ups. There's a valuable role to sending group chats that are, you know, that keep people connected and making plans for the future and sharing things. And there's definitely a part to one on one chats with your friends through whatever texting program you want to use.
So can social media, specifically computer mediated communication, including like, you know, video chat, play a positive role in our social leisure time? Definitely. And if you are not finding that you feel thoroughly nourished, which means you're feeling alone, you're feeling disconnected, you should take action to move away from the entertainment uses of social media and towards the communication uses of social media.
Sadie: Interesting. Okay. One thing that I want to touch on, which I think we hope is common sense, but maybe isn't at this point, which is the correlation between relationships and friendships and overall well being. And similarly, what happens when we are lonely and how that connects to our mental health?
Because we know that feeling unconnected isn't necessarily a positive experience. We know that, you know, Not having relationships in our life isn't good for us But I don't think teens fully understand the extent of that So would it be possible for you to kind of explain why these things are so important and why we're having this conversation?
Because again, it's we're not taught this in school and we hope that people are aware of this and like learn by experiences But I also didn't hear the statistics until I got to college and so
Jeffrey: yeah
Sadie: Can you speak to that a little bit?
Jeffrey: Totally. , the first thing I like to start with when we talk about loneliness is that loneliness is two things, not one.
And this is extremely confusing because the way that we talk about loneliness is that they're the same thing and they're not. One area of research on loneliness is a research loneliness that's on people who are chronically lonely and we're talking about, , and this, there are even studies that find that people are, who are chronically lonely or.
chronically connected, right? Constantly feel not lonely. The opposite are that way over decades of time that there is a there is a part of chronic loneliness that has dispositional. There's a part of chronic loneliness, which is situational, meaning if you have had an unhealthy home life, if you're having, issues that challenge your mental health, depression, for example, tends to actually create loneliness.
But there's also a genetic component to loneliness. So some people are probably lonely a whole lot, just like some people are connected often, most of the time in their lives. What we know about chronic loneliness is that chronic loneliness is extremely unhealthy. That over time it predicts all kinds of negative outcomes in terms of mortality, disease prevalence, ability to fight off infection, etc.
People who are chronically lonely also don't want to be lonely. But they engage in behaviors which often make them more lonely or perpetuate their loneliness. They discount the value that they offer to other people. They think that they're not really worthwhile people. If they get invited to do things, they go, I don't really want to go to that or I don't really want to be part of that.
But I would point out that there's a big between this and the second type of loneliness, which is fluctuating, situational, daily, weekly, monthly loneliness. That's actually a sign of good health. If you know that you are able to feel lonely, it means that your need to belong is functioning. So I'll give you an example.
I'm on fellowship right now at Harvard working on projects related to social media. And my two kids and my wife are here in Lawrence, Kansas. And when I am not with them, I miss them so much. I miss them so much. Even though I text them, I video chat with them, we play games together, I do everything I can to be in touch with them while I'm away, my longing for them is very real and painful.
But that longing is healthy. It means that I have a functional system, which alerts me to the threat of not being connected and motivates me to take more action to be connected, right? And so now that I'm home, and I've only been home for about five, six days now, You know, I'm hugging them more, I'm spending time with them intentionally, I'm really present because I am working to resolve that loneliness.
So I'm not chronically lonely, right? But I'm situationally lonely. And the more that I take responsibility and action to resolve that loneliness, the better things get. So I think your question is very important to keep in mind. You will have better and more high quality days. weeks and months. If you respond to your feelings of loneliness in ways that are pro social, inviting people, taking opportunities to talk, reaching out to friends, even through, you know, texting or whatever channels that you want, but you have to respond to it.
You have to treat it as a sign of rather than I'm lonely and I shouldn't do anything, right, that This is a bad thing and there's something wrong with me. Instead, this is good. I feel lonely, which means that I'm going to take action. It's a functional system like hunger to motivate good quality actions.
So I would say that for those who are in the chronic lonely state, this is one of the last things I would like to say about this is that there is definitely treatments and therapies available. Loneliness co occurs with depression. One of the most common co occurrences of mental health, struggles and loneliness is depression.
Treatments for depression exist and can help and can make a big difference. So if you are a person who feels as if your loneliness is in a state that just doesn't change and year in, year out, you still constantly are feeling lonely no matter what you do, you don't feel different. , you, you know, you might benefit from, from treatments that focus on loneliness hand in hand with depression or whatever it else that you're, you're coping with.
Sadie: 100%. Completely agree. , you mentioned earlier in our conversation that the way that relate with social media has a huge impact, and one of the studies that we read this semester was about, looking at Facebook and categorizing the types of words that people used, and the people that used really, like, hateful language, swearing, really negative, really negative.
Language, it predicted heart attack rates and it predicted like county over county, how likely people were to have heart attacks. And it's interesting how that kind of reflects that the way that we are off of social media and sometimes can mirror how we are on social media as well. You also mentioned that like retrospectively after you're scrolling on Tik TOK being like, Oh, that was terrible.
I shouldn't have done that. Then you're no longer like, Oh, I just watched so many funny videos. So happy. , What other kind of ways that we interact with social media are important to be aware of, , and be intentional with?
Jeffrey: Yeah. Social media is very interesting because the kind of studies that you mentioned are often drawn from publicly available data on platforms like X, which used to be Twitter, You know, anything that's geolocatable, like people, you can hunt down people's zip codes or otherwise and look at its relationship with, you know, mental health reports and otherwise. So in some ways you can think of social media almost like a public health, like, information tool to gather information of how are the communities doing.
You know, what, what are people talking about? What are their concerns at some level? , so I think that there's some really fascinating stuff that has linked what people do with social media as an indication of where people are at or how people feel. What's tricky here is, is that I'm not 100 percent sure that it's because that social media existed that people said hateful things.
I think it's life likely that they are also living in communities that are disadvantaged economically. Disadvantage because of maybe, maybe issues related to climate change or related to political animus or crime or otherwise. Which also contributes to their likelihood of saying hateful things on social media.
And I, , put it this way. There is not consensus amongst academics that the chain of causality is from economic disadvantage or social disadvantage to social media speech that's negative. But I think that there is a strong argument to be made that it's more likely that social media is almost like a thermostat for where people are at rather than a causal mechanism.
So I think that one thing to keep in mind is that when we think about these kind of findings and otherwise we should always keep them in the context of compassion for people. When people struggle, they're looking for answers. They're looking for ways of resolving that. And a lot of times hateful speech, politically aggressive speech and otherwise, is an indicator of overall want and need in very desperate ways.
, we also know, for example, that in communities that have high suicide rates are also communities that people feel massively isolated, that people don't have access to good mental health care, that people are economically disadvantaged. So I'm willing to keep in mind here is it's not just the case that social media is part of this, but social media is something that people turn to when they feel really crappy.
, and they try to find some way of resolving that. And those ways are not healthy. I just want to be clear, I'm not advocating for these negative behaviors. , they're not healthy. But they're also not being caused by social media.
Sadie: Yeah. What you're saying is exactly what I wanted to ask you about next, which is kind of what we very briefly touched on initially, which is this question of, teen mental health in social media and kind of the public misconception that teens are on social media and are therefore depressed or anxious or lonely, , or depression rates are rising, people are self diagnosing on social media.
Like, all of these kinds of causal relationships that people are assuming, , that might not necessarily be accurate. And it's really interesting to see how that plays out politically with different hearings that we see televised or, , especially with like meta and body image and things like that. It's very hot topic.
But what are your thoughts, what does the research show about teen mental health and social media? Boy, that's a tough one. I know. There's,
Jeffrey: there's a lot of controversy, , and I'm always cautious to try to say it, because I know that you have a, you know, an audience of people who are interested in answers.
, so I'm always want to be careful, , about what I say, , to be as close as I can to what the research, what I think it says. First thing that I might add here is that one thing that's very difficult to know for sure is whether Social media, the best explanation of its effects or its association with teen mental health, or the lack thereof, specifically, is related to social media, or whether or not it is a new instantiation of old media practices is an area of hot debate.
When I grew up, and it was definitely the case that women's magazines, particularly teen girls magazines and advertising, Both through broadcast media and what you might see in, you know, commercial television and any other form of media you could access. It had a lot of distorted body images for women.
It contributed to negative self esteem around that. That was print media, right? That was broadcast media, not social media because it didn't exist yet. That social media is doing the same thing through advertising and through otherwise, is concerning. There's, I think that the evidence is pretty clear that the, the distorted body image issues that are offered through media are, can be harmful to young women's self esteem and body image issues.
Is it social media as a channel, or is it media as an institution and advertising that's just behind all this? I don't know. I don't think that there has been strong enough evidence to say that social media is uniquely harmful. Instead, if you look at the rates of where teens get their information, it's like they, it used to be the case that something like 80 percent of teens would at least look at a magazine from time to time.
That's like a 0 percent now and that's not an exaggeration. Like if you, if you go around dorm rooms, no one has a magazine, it's like, what the hell is that? A magazine, right? If you think about television, although there's about an equivalent amount of television watching, , , then the past as there is the present, it's not the case that the amount of the television is the same form, right?
It's streaming. It's, it's a lot more stuff. You control the commercial content, meaning you don't see advertising as much. So what's tricky here is, is that to say, well, as social media specifically. Harmful also is kind of interesting because you can choose through social media to see less advertising and advertising was a major source of women's body image issues from the, you know, research in the past.
So that's just an example of where it's super tricky to know whether or not social media is causing it or it's a new channel that's really effective at getting a lot of information out to its users and because of its way of being organized is also difficult to break the habit of watching a lot of it.
, all media though, all media, the goal of media companies is to have you watch more content, all of it. And the reason is, is because they want to sell advertising to you and that's how it works. So unless you pay for it, you are the content. You are what's being delivered to advertisers is your eyeballs and your attention.
And it's important to keep that in mind. , you know, content creators, influencers kind of work by a slightly different thing, but not really. They're also content creators. propping up sales. They're selling stuff there. They're asking their community to pay them or to pay for, you know, privileged access to them.
So these are all part of a broader media ecosystem that's changing, but as a fundamental cause of harm. I don't think the evidence says fundamentally that these issues are worse because of social media, although it's definitely the case that social media and these bad things go hand in hand, but it's always been the case that advertising, broadcast media, televised media, has contributed to negative issues, particularly around women's body issues.
Sadie: Do you have any thoughts or theories on why, , parents and adults are so quick to make that correlation between teen mental health and social media and just put blame in that bucket and then move on.
Jeffrey: Because they're also very famous people, , academics included, who believe it to be true.
, I don't blame parents for not, they can't read all the research that I read. That's my job. , it's also at one level, I really want to make this clear. I don't blame parents for not knowing what the best answers are. It's not their fault. We are not as an academic community speaking with one voice on this.
And in some ways that's good. It's good to have debate in academic communities about what's going on because it's a confusing and complex issue when we talk about teen mental health. So there's currently a book out that's just been released. It's a major proponent of blaming social media. , you have attorney's general's lawsuits, you have the TikTok debates, I mean, it's everywhere.
How, how is a parent to know? However, parents thought that comic were going to ruin children. Parents thought that listening to radio programs were going to ruin children. Parents thought that Atari video games like Pong were going to ruin children. Parents thought that arcades were going to ruin children.
Parents thought that all media at all times were ruinous to children, always. It has never been the case. And since, you know, tech basically mass media was invented, that there has not been a time in which the parents weren't afraid of what their kids were doing. At one level, this comes from compassion.
We want the best for our kids and we're afraid about these new technologies. We don't understand harming them. That is legitimate. And we should be aware that techno, I'm not saying. That all the content in media is good content, or appropriate for all ages. I am not saying that. But it also is the case that historically we've always blamed media.
The second thing that I might say, which I think is worth at least considering, is that part of it is parents don't understand what kids are getting out of it because they don't know what it is. My own kids I give a lot of autonomy to in terms of what they watch. And I often ask, what are you looking at?
What have you seen that's interesting? What's going on? But I don't monitor them like over their shoulder or restrict their access. So I have to actually build trust. With them to say, what we have as an exchange is you get some access to these things, but I also invite you to conversation with me about those things, and we regulate when it's watched and how it's watched based on, you know, homework and schedules and bedtime and all that kind of stuff.
But the point is, I totally understand why parents are not sure what to think. And I would also say it varies by kids. Some kids are going to struggle a lot more with getting off their device than others, just because of the nature of their disposition. So parents want answers, and academics are not speaking with one voice.
And I think that makes it very hard to be a parent to provide good guidance, as a parent myself, to provide good guidance to other parents.
Sadie: Yeah, 100%. My last question I want to ask you is if you have a handful of best practices or quick recommendations based on everything we talked about, whether it's friendships, feeling connected and taking positive steps, their social media usage.
What do you wish teens were doing a general level?
Jeffrey: Yeah, this advice is something that I would say applies to everybody, not just teens. But I would say that I have a handful of things that I strongly recommend. I think our research Based. Yeah. One. Strengthen the What does strengthen the signal mean?
It means that when given a choice, you should prioritize using higher bandwidth channels of communication. I know people don't like talking on the phone, but if they prefer doing a FaceTime, awesome. Better than texting. Texting is better than social media and better than group chat. And both of the, all of those things are better than nothing though.
So it's really important to keep in mind is, is that. It's good to try to move up the ladder of communication to high quality, stronger signal channels. Second. is increase the quality of your communication by being a responsive listener, asking questions, reaching out to people, being willing to show affection and love for them, to say I appreciate you, I love you in whatever way that makes sense.
I did a study about how seven different quality communication can increase the qualities of your days. So if you do one of these seven randomly assigned to college students, you end up being happier, less lonely, more connected at the end of the day. So quality communication is the second. The third is tighten the circle.
A lot of times we are pulled into controversies and differences of opinion and battles at our broader social network that really don't deserve our time and attention at the level that we think they do. But tightening the circle means a few people that we really care about spending more time with them, communicating with them more often and focusing our energies and times on people who really matter.
Because the research generally says that high quality communication with people that we care about goes a lot farther than high quality communication with people that we are. Um,, and then the last thing is, is that I would add is make it a priority. We need to prioritize friendship at all times of our lives.
, I think that people hanging out together is one of the greatest gifts that we have as humans. Just the pleasure of being around people we like and laughing and joking and doing stuff. Even if doing stuff is playing media or being on social media, it's all fine. Because it's a process of being with one another.
I think prioritizing that means, if you are at a stage of your life where it's harder to get friends together, you need to probably be the person that invites. And you need to make follow up on plans. Don't just say, we should get together. Make a plan to get together. Don't just say, we should keep in touch.
Keep in touch. While having the compassion to understand that just because another person is not good at keeping in touch, it doesn't mean that they don't appreciate your efforts to keep in touch. Yeah.
Sadie: Yeah. 100%. Well, if people want to connect with you and continue to consume your content, read your books, all of the things, where can they find you?
Jeffrey: Yeah, so I direct the relationship and technology lab at the University of Kansas. My website is articles that I've published, the research projects I'm working on, videos about our content, you know, what kinds of things that, , have I've been in the media, whether I've been cited by different sources or otherwise is all right there.
, we're going to be releasing a book next year, , that is called the social biome that will reflect a lot of the ideas that I have here. And I think that will be interesting for a lot of people who might be interested in these things in a deeper level.
Sadie: Incredible. Well, all of that will be in the show notes and thank you so much.
Jeffrey: All right. It's a pleasure. Take care.
Sadie: Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of she persisted. If you enjoyed, make sure to share with a friend or family member, it really helps out the podcast. And if you haven't already leave a review on apple podcasts or Spotify, you can also make sure to follow along at actually persisted podcast on both Instagram and Tik TOK, and check out all the bonus resources, content and information on my website.
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